It's located in Elizabeth Town, which is about a 40 minute drive out of Launceston, so strangely it's still more local to me than all the tracks up in QLD were to me. Very interesting.
I'd heard it was a nice 3 lane track, however I wasn't fully prepared for the natives when I arrived.
Yes, Alpacas. Interesting. They spit, apparently.
My next impression was 'damn this is a big shed for a slot car track'.
Occupational Health and Safety eat your heart out with that ramp.
Stairs are coming for the entry apparently.
There are stairs on the inside though, and they look rather like this.
It's a challenge getting up these stairs with your hands full of cars and tools. More so coming down at the end of the night! No drunkards allowed here!
And inside this wonderful shed of Slot Car Mania.... Well, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.
It's best described as a fast yet fluid track, it has a really great rhythm to drive on and is very smooth flowing. This track is owned by Barry, who is one of the local lads.
We had 11 people show up for racing, and as a rather recurring event for me and racing in any group, I was racing under a different name for the first heat. I was Michael in Q32, looks like I was Brian for the first class for this night. This was due to Brian actually arriving late, so I did my best under the name of Brian.
I hope Eggy will forgive me, but I undertook some blatant plagiarism and proceeded to claim that I would finish well. But if I didn't, as the big man says, Slot Cars Are The Winners On The Night.
First class for the night was Trans Am. Imagine my surprise when I ran 10th. A far cry from my Q32 glory days. Of course, no prep time, a badly setup car that has only ever really been used for magnet racing where I don't need to set anything up, and learning a new track, all combined to make me run second to last, yet I had fun anyway.
I took no pictures, I was too busy getting to know the local racers.
The second class for the night, was Le Mans classic 1965 - 1970. All I had to run with was my Fly Porsche 908/2. Another badly setup car. It needs dremel on the chassis to let the body rock, and it needs new tyres - MJK of course - and a little weight... Then it'll go nicely. I ran 10th again, but was just cruising around the track and laughing at the sledging going on.
There are only four classes this group races, theres Le Mans classic 1965-1970, Trans Am, Le Mans Modern, and GT (JGTC, Le Mans GT, any GT really). Keeps costs down, though people can go custom chassis if they want to etc for Le Mans classic and Trans Am, the others are pretty much box stock.
With the racing, it's done as a timed event, so we ran 3 x 4 minute heats, starting where you finish the previous heat, as it runs trakmate it's pretty reasonable and all that.
Anyway, that's my mini report of the affairs down here, was good fun and I'll be sure to post pics of the other tracks I go and race on in the near future.
Fortunately I think the next round is all of 5 minutes from my house. Launceston is great :)
Cheers all,
-- Rob
